80,000 Hours Podcast
#187 – Zach Weinersmith on how researching his book turned him from a space optimist into a "space bastard"
Episode guests
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
- Space colonization presents unique challenges such as labor exploitation, power concentration, and equitable system prioritization.
- Ethical concerns arise regarding experiments on babies and the potential genetic impacts of space settlement.
- Mars is a potential settlement location with challenges like dust storms, high temperatures, and thin atmospheres.
- The lack of legal framework for territorial claims in space raises governance and resource management challenges.
- Modeling space governance after the International Seabed Authority could ensure sustainable resource allocation and environmental protection.
- Addressing governance early on is crucial for ensuring a sustainable and equitable future for space colonization.
Deep dives
Space Suits & Lower Pressure
Space suits are kept at lower pressure than spacecraft to make it easier to bend and operate inside. Increasing oxygen concentration in space suits can be risky due to past tragedies related to pure oxygen environments.
Settling Space Challenges
The challenges of living in space include radiation exposure, bone loss, muscle degradation, fluid shifts in the body, and lack of trauma medicine. Long-term effects on human biology in space are largely unknown.
Human Reproduction in Space
The idea of sexual activities in space has been considered feasible, but concerns arise regarding pregnancy and childbirth. Developmental challenges in space include fetal growth under different gravitational conditions, with little data on potential long-term effects.
Space Settlement Goals
The potential benefits of space settlement include personal choice analogous to a 'hot tub' decision and a long-term vision of creating a 'cathedral of survival' for humanity. However, ethical considerations regarding experiments on babies and potential genetic impacts raise critical concerns.
Human Physiology in Space
The unique challenges of space environments include microgravity effects on bones and muscles, radiation exposure, fluid shifts in the body, and the need for careful handling of pregnancy, childbirth, and child development. Lack of substantial research data presents significant hurdles for long-term human habitation in space.
Ethical Implications of Reproduction in Space
Reproduction in space poses significant ethical concerns, with human development requiring extended research due to child maturation needing time for experimentation. The lack of a comprehensive textbook for space physiology indicates a vast array of experimental results over decades.
Challenges of Settlement on Planets
Mars is often considered a potential settlement location due to its relatively better conditions compared to other planets like Mercury and Venus. Challenges such as thin atmospheres causing dust storms, high surface temperature, and the presence of substances like prochlorates pose obstacles for long-term human habitation.
Space Law and Conflict Prevention
Space law, as established by the Outer Space Treaty, prohibits sovereignty claims in space, aiming to maintain a conflict-free environment. The lack of legal framework for territorial claims in space reduces the likelihood of interplanetary conflicts but raises challenges in governance and resource management.
Space Governance: Setting the Foundation for Future Settlements
Establishing a robust governance structure for space settlements is crucial to address potential challenges like labor exploitation, power concentration, and sociological norms. Drawing from existing literature on company towns and communes, proposals for space settlements should be informed by sociological and economic insights to mitigate risks and prioritize fair and equitable systems.
Leveraging Legal Frameworks: Learning from the International Seabed Authority
Modeling space governance after the International Seabed Authority's approach could offer a framework for sustainable resource allocation and exploitation in space. This would involve a system where companies petition for rights to explore and extract resources, similar to the Law of the Sea, with considerations for equitable distribution and environmental protection.
Looking Ahead: Space Settlement Territories and Rights
Anticipating future space settlement scenarios, concerns about digital minds in space, and potential territorial claims highlight the importance of addressing governance issues early on. Setting up systems to handle property rights, labor regulations, and ethical guidelines for space colonization can shape a more sustainable and equitable space-faring future.
Space Governance Legal Regimes
Different legal regimes for space, like the ISA, Antarctic Treaty System, and the Law of the Sea, aim to prevent conflicts and maintain peace by regulating space activities without claiming territory, ensuring sustainability and avoiding exploitation.
Tragedy of the Commons in Space
The podcast discusses the concept of the tragedy of the commons in space, where resources may be overexploited if not managed properly. Ways to address this include regulating resource usage and setting limits to ensure sustainability and prevent individuals from causing harm for personal gain.
"Earth economists, when they measure how bad the potential for exploitation is, they look at things like, how is labour mobility? How much possibility do labourers have otherwise to go somewhere else? Well, if you are on the one company town on Mars, your labour mobility is zero, which has never existed on Earth. Even in your stereotypical West Virginian company town run by immigrant labour, there’s still, by definition, a train out. On Mars, you might not even be in the launch window. And even if there are five other company towns or five other settlements, they’re not necessarily rated to take more humans. They have their own oxygen budget, right?
"And so economists use numbers like these, like labour mobility, as a way to put an equation and estimate the ability of a company to set noncompetitive wages or to set noncompetitive work conditions. And essentially, on Mars you’re setting it to infinity." — Zach Weinersmith
In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Zach Weinersmith — the cartoonist behind Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal — about the latest book he wrote with his wife Kelly: A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.
They cover:
- Why space travel is suddenly getting a lot cheaper and re-igniting enthusiasm around space settlement.
- What Zach thinks are the best and worst arguments for settling space.
- Zach’s journey from optimistic about space settlement to a self-proclaimed “space bastard” (pessimist).
- How little we know about how microgravity and radiation affects even adults, much less the children potentially born in a space settlement.
- A rundown of where we could settle in the solar system, and the major drawbacks of even the most promising candidates.
- Why digging bunkers or underwater cities on Earth would beat fleeing to Mars in a catastrophe.
- How new space settlements could look a lot like old company towns — and whether or not that’s a bad thing.
- The current state of space law and how it might set us up for international conflict.
- How space cannibalism legal loopholes might work on the International Space Station.
- And much more.
Chapters:
- Space optimism and space bastards (00:03:04)
- Bad arguments for why we should settle space (00:14:01)
- Superficially plausible arguments for why we should settle space (00:28:54)
- Is settling space even biologically feasible? (00:32:43)
- Sex, pregnancy, and child development in space (00:41:41)
- Where’s the best space place to settle? (00:55:02)
- Creating self-sustaining habitats (01:15:32)
- What about AI advances? (01:26:23)
- A roadmap for settling space (01:33:45)
- Space law (01:37:22)
- Space signalling and propaganda (01:51:28)
- Space war (02:00:40)
- Mining asteroids (02:06:29)
- Company towns and communes in space (02:10:55)
- Sending digital minds into space (02:26:37)
- The most promising space governance models (02:29:07)
- The tragedy of the commons (02:35:02)
- The tampon bandolier and other bodily functions in space (02:40:14)
- Is space cannibalism legal? (02:47:09)
- The pregnadrome and other bizarre proposals (02:50:02)
- Space sexism (02:58:38)
- What excites Zach about the future (03:02:57)
Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering lead: Ben Cordell
Technical editing: Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic Armstrong
Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
Transcriptions: Katy Moore
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